“When you explain the Catholic process of how to make a moral decision, it makes sense and lots of them are very open to that,” McMorrow explained. “Catholic morality is beautiful and logical, and we need to train our young people in it so they can be good decision makers.”
The Age of Tolerance
The lessons are countercultural. Technology and media bombard youth with immorality and provide readily downloadable temptation, be it pornography or violent gaming. Neumayr has observed that younger generations tend to want the Catholic Church to operate like a democracy. If a majority of followers use birth control or support gay “marriage,” for instance, then many would argue the church should adapt to social norms.
“They think truth is dictated by society,” she said. “There’s this general call for tolerance, and few hold convictions as true.”
The Barna Group study reported that half of Catholics ages 18-29 have experienced significant frustration with their religion, and a quarter of them went through a period when they felt like rejecting their parents’ faith.
Another common sentiment Neumayr has perceived among teens and young adults is the sin of presumption — that is, a belief that dabbling in sinful behaviors is acceptable because God loves them unconditionally and wants them to be happy and therefore won’t hold them accountable.
“There are governing principles that are imbued in us by our creator, by our nature and not merely by our environment, and that concept is absent in adolescents, especially in public schools,” Neumayr said. “It’s just not in the (public) curriculum to be taught that man is faith and reason, soul and body. They’ve been taught that all natural law is relative to ‘me and what I consider moral or immoral.’”
Distracted Families
McMorrow, father of six, noted that younger generations are so tuned into technology and so overextended in extracurricular activities that practices like family rosary, daily Mass or community service are rare.
“We lose track of the main goal of the family,” he said. “No wonder it’s not sinking in and taking root. We’re sending them to college just touching on the surface of the one thing they really need, and that’s faith.”
Sending such “at-risk Christians” into the collegiate culture can be perilous for their faith. A Pew Forum survey indicated that nearly three-quarters of Americans who change their religion leave their childhood faith in their 20s, usually by 24.
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“In college, students are being challenged on the traditional ideas that their family and their early education taught them, in a hedonistic atmosphere,” Neumayr said. “Religion is challenging and filled with paradox, and that’s just not perceived as useful in college. By the time you graduate, you’re this man of reason, and if you can’t feel it, taste it, see it — it’s not important.”
“If you don’t have the wonder, the love, the attachment to this religion you belong to, and you don’t have anything that ties your faith with your peers or your teachers or the books you read, you can become lost,” she added.
After college young adults are delaying the classic hallmarks of adulthood, such as marriage, children and financial independence. Modern 20-somethings are not settling down, starting families and returning to church by age 30, as was often the case in the past. The Barna Group study indicated that a staggering 56 percent of once-active Catholics left the church between ages 18 to 29.
“I am absolutely concerned,” McMorrow said. “My goal is to do youth ministry effectively so when people are 25 they’re still actively Catholic. You can’t judge a Catholic school or youth ministry by what we’re doing now, but so that when they are at that point in their 20s, they can’t imagine their life without the Catholic faith at the center.”
Posted with permission from Catholic Anchor, newspaper for the Archdiocese of Anchorage.